


day seventeen. nine o’clock at night.

by 2ndtolastrow



Series: Congratulations, it’s an old man! [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, I’m an idiot who forgot to make this a part of the series a thing first, angst but with a hopeful ending, despite the summary jason isn’t actually in this, its the murder fic!!!, yay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 07:30:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20206018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndtolastrow/pseuds/2ndtolastrow
Summary: Jason Todd, Thomas Wayne, and “Look at your life. Look at your choices.”





	day seventeen. nine o’clock at night.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: discussion of flashpoint!bruce’s and (canon!)jason’s deaths, discussion of murderous vigilantism, and private citizens with weapons

Thomas doesn’t go out on patrol. This city has a Batman, and a whole host of other crime fighters. This city doesn’t need an angry old man with a grudge and the willingness to kill criminals. 

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t do his homework, of course. That he isn’t learning every one of this city’s heroes and villains.

That is when he learns this city, apparently, has an angry _young_ man with a grudge and a willingness to kill criminals. 

He sits at the desk, a too big man hunched over a not big enough surface, and reads over the file on Jason Todd slowly, trying to process the information. (Jason Todd-Wayne, who he knew as a big, muscular man who was hanging halfway out of a tree screaming at his baby brother. The Red Hood.)

It is uncomfortably familiar.

The room is dark as he watches lamplight drift over the words of the file. The sort of words he’d seen before. He watches a shadow shift as he turns the page.

A death. A lack of sufficient justice. Anger. Violence in the name of—

In the name of—

In the name of what, exactly?

Jason, according to this, had wanted to make the Joker hurt. Had wanted to make Bruce look at the boy he had supposedly left behind and forgotten. Had decided that imprisonment wasn’t good enough, that if a criminal got back out and hurt people that was the system's fault. Had decided he deserved to decide where second chances stopped.

In the name of protection? In the name of revenge? In the name of a wound running through his bones that festered like an open sore and left him thinking about it every single day?

In the name of the loss of a son. 

Or is that Thomas? Is he seeing something when there isn’t really anything to see outside of a mirror? Is he the one who was hurting people—was killing people for no reason other than his own dissatisfaction with the available system?

Isn’t that the man he is?

What would he have done if he had been Bruce? (Except he knows the answer to that, he lived it.)

What would he have done if he had been Jason? 

He closes his eyes, rests his head on his hands. The file rustles in a slight breeze.

Someone opens the door, walks quietly through the room. “Are you quite alright, Master Thomas?”

“Do you remember,” Thomas asks, wiping his hands over his still-clear face, “that Martha used to carry a gun?”

“I—yes. A pistol.” He looks up at Alfred (and isn’t that strange, looking _up_ at Alfred with he’s got almost a foot in height on him), looks down at the file (at the small headshot of Jason, angrily scowling at the camera). 

Snorts. “She always said she would use it, and I believed her. I don’t think it would’ve gone the other way around, though.”

“Given the ways I’ve seen you with a knife, I have to disagree.” Alfred is joking. It’s sweet of him, meant to settle Thomas’s mind, but they both know that half the reason he’d been able to keep a secret identity had been the simple fact that no one thought Thomas Wayne, doctor and philanthropist and all-around good guy, could do things like that.

Even just the things that this Batman did, not to mention—

He’s so tired. “The problem is you'd be right.”

Alfred gasps. It’s a quiet sound, hidden under years of stoicism, but it’s audible in a room where the only sound is the creaking of an old house and the wind outside the doors.

Thomas smiles at him. It isn’t a happy smile. It isn’t kind, or loving, or any of the other things smiles are supposed to be. “In my timeline, Batman was a murderer, Alfred. And I—“

“Batman, or Thomas Wayne?” The question is direct and exact and he knows the response will be entirely disheartening.

“Batman.” He watches something break in Alfred’s (already so worn out) eyes. “I’m not a good man, not the father Bruce remembers or—“

Alfred regains his footing quickly. “I suspect that Mister Allen did not refrain from explaining both the strengths and weaknesses of his reasoning.”

“What?” Thomas frowns, because what does—

“Mister Allen,” Alfred tells him, in that ‘you’re being exceptionally stupid’ tone of his, “is a very honest man, and the Justice League would question him thoroughly on bringing you across worlds. It is more likely that Master Bruce simply doesn’t _care_.”

“Alfred, I don’t—“

“I keep a shotgun in the Cave. It is not always loaded with rubber rounds, Master Thomas. He loves you, and you aren’t hurting people—“

“But I _have!_” Thomas shoves the chair back and stands. A rapid, violent motion of rising to his feet that most days, most times, he doesn’t allow himself. He nearly knocks over the lamp. “I have killed people, and it is not okay just because I’m not doing it _right now!_”

“So make it _okay_,” Alfred challenges him, unfazed. “Fix it. Don’t just be a wreck of a man. You’re a doctor, are you not?”

“How the hell do I fix something like this?” Thomas’s shoulders slump, and the sudden burst of power is gone. The sudden way he’d been able to loom over Alfred gives out. He runs a hand over his face again. “How do I fix any of this?”

“You get back up, that’s what you do. Goddamn it, Thomas.”

Thomas jerks. There are many lines pushed and broken between the two of them (between so many relationships Alfred has built in this world), but the sound of his name alone still—“What?”

“You fucked your life up pretty damn well. So make your apologies and get back up. Do better.”

He can’t help but laugh. Here is his butler and his best friend, staring up straight into his eyes, swearing his proper, British heart out. “And that’s enough?”

“It’s enough if you make it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments/kudos welcome


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